My eyes narrowed. “You look nervous.”
“How soon do you think you can get this training thing down with me? I mean, how much can we push the limits before you think I’ll be ready to face things on my own?”
Face things? She wanted to do it without me? “I don’t understand. What would you possibly have to face?”
“Demons.” She swallowed. “Say an extra sixty shiny new ones with pointy horns and uncontrollable appetites.”
Every muscle in my achy body tensed. “What the hell? Please tell me that’s your idea of a joke.”
“Afraid not.” Stephanie pushed away from the bed and walked toward the window hugging her body. “According to Ethan, the numbers reported to us don’t match. They’ve been creating.”
“That’s forbidden!” I yelled, jumping off the bed, ready to march down to their headquarters and light them all on fire. “They know this, they wouldn’t dare. Ever since Pompeii the rules have been—”
“I know the rules.” Stephanie arched an eyebrow. “They dared all right, they dared at least sixty times without calling a human number, meaning they’re picking off randoms wherever they can find them.”
My headache flared to life. “I can’t do anything—not as a human.”
“I can.” Stephanie turned to face me. “Teach me what I need to know, and I can do it.”
“But—”
“Please.” Her blue eyes flashed a brilliant white then dimmed and saddened as she glanced away from me and back out the window. “I have to help. I mean you said you’d help me learn what I am, right? You said you were here to help train me. So, what’s the problem?”
The problem? I forced my irritation inward. The damn problem was that if I spent all my days training her—and believe me it would take all day and all night—I wouldn’t have time to romance her. To win her over, to prove my love. After tonight I’d already decided to switch tactics. I needed to do better. Dedicate my every waking moment to winning her the way she deserved.
How the hell was I supposed to do that while training her? I’d be helping her access the darkest parts of her soul. I’d be hurting her, she’d be hurting me. It was a nightmare.
“Sure.” My humanity won out, blurting the answer before my brain could catch up. “Sure I can do that. But I refuse to let you go into any of their compounds by yourself. You take either Ethan or Mason with you.”
“Not Alex?” she teased.
I rolled my eyes. “Sirens are all about love, not war. You know this.”
She nodded. “I know it firsthand.”
I had a hard time focusing on the words coming out of her mouth, especially when her eyes were so bright, so inviting. I looked away. “You’ll always have that part of you, Stephanie.”
“The Siren part?”
I smirked. “Don’t all women?”
“Funny.”
“I mean it.” I frowned as a piece of her hair fell across her face, shielding those gorgeous eyes I was so obsessed with. Without thinking, I brushed her hair back with my fingertips, her mouth opened with a little gasp. “It was easy, casting a Siren’s glamour, because you were so beautiful it wouldn’t take much convincing for other immortals to buy into it.”
Was it so wrong? To hide her away for hundreds of years? To keep the truth of her heritage hidden from her, until now? At the time I was protecting her. Thinking Sariel would kill her. Dark Ones were still an abomination, regardless of our parentage.
She gulped and looked down, her chest rose and fell, though she didn’t need oxygen, she was sucking it in like she was about to pass out.
“I’m sorry,” I mumbled. “For suppressing your powers. I did it—” The words hung up in my throat. Out of love. Out of devotion. Out of fear. “I did it to protect you.”
She glanced up. “I know, Cassius. I’m not upset, not anymore. I just wish…”
“What?” I stepped closer, our bodies nearly touched. “What do you wish?”
“Why did you always walk away from me?”
I licked my lips and leaned in until our mouths almost touched. “Walking away—when all I wanted to do was walk toward you—had to be the hardest thing I’ve ever done. But everything I did—every decision made—was in order for you to flourish, to survive, to become something great.”
She let out a little laugh. “Wow, I must be such a disappointment then. I can’t control any of my emotions, and I’m one hissy fit away from freezing your ass or killing people I love by simply willing it.”
“You won’t,” I vowed. “I mean you won’t kill your family. And you are the furthest thing from a disappointment.”
She shrugged.
“Look at me.”
Slowly, Stephanie lifted her head, her eyes filled with shame.
“You’re perfect,” I whispered reverently. “And I wouldn’t want you any other way.”